Pat Sullivan, Associated PressIn Houston, a chemical plant stands across a bayou from a local park. Lawmakers are considering requiring tests on the health effects of all substances released in manufacturing.

Congress is poised to rewrite a three-decade-old federal law regulating chemicals -- even as health, medical and environmental leaders debate a new government report strongly linking environmental exposures to cancer.

U.S. House and Senate lawmakers last month introduced a bill, the Safe Chemicals Act, that would require safety testing of all industrial chemicals, a move sought for some time by environmental and community activists.

If approved, it would mark a big change from the current chemical safety law -- the 34-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act -- which requires testing only after evidence is presented suggesting that a chemical is unsafe.

Some health officials and environmentalists argue that after-the-fact enforcement wasn't the original intent of the 1976 federal chemicals law, which Congress approved around the same time as various, more stringent, clean water and clean air acts.

"No, it didn't complete what it was meant to do, which was to really study chemicals and understand their health impacts in order to determine whether they should be on market before they were put out there," said John McLeod, director of environmental health at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.

"There are 80,000 chemicals out there and very few have really been evaluated. That fact alone means that people need to be engaged in conversation now more than ever."

Environmental groups often point out that of the 62,000 chemicals on the market at the time the chemical law was approved in 1976, the EPA has since only required testing on about 200 -- and only regulated five.

"It would put the burden on the companies up front, instead of letting all kinds of things go on the market, letting people get sick, then doing some testing, fighting through some law suits and little getting done for the public."

The new proposed law, if approved by Congress, would "require manufacturers to provide information about chemicals in consumer products instead of presuming substances are safe until proven dangerous," according to the group Safer Chemicals Healthy Families.

Under current law, for example, the government has been unable to ban most uses of asbestos, even though it is recognized widely as highly carcinogenic, says Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of a Senate subcommittee on toxins and environmental health. A webcast of one of the committee's hearings from March of this year is available online.

N.J. Sen. Frank Lautenberg "America's system for regulating industrial chemicals is broken," Lautenberg, who introduced the Senate version of the bill, said in a statement. "Parents are afraid because hundreds of untested chemicals are found in their children's bodies."

The chemical industry says it shares Lautenberg's concern about safety and will work to strengthen the bill. But its support comes with major caveats.

Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement that "we are concerned that the bill's proposed decision-making standard may be legally and technically impossible to meet."

Dooley said the more stringent standards, however, could actually hinder the development of new products that could be safer than existing ones now "grandfathered" under the old law.

He also said states would be allowed to adopt their own regulations under the proposed bill, which would "create a lack of regulatory uniformity for chemicals and the products that use them."

A Cleveland-area environmental law expert partially agreed with the Chemistry Council's point.

Prof. Jonathan Adler"This could mean that newer safer chemicals are left on the shelf while we continue to use older, less safe (and often untested) alternatives that are already on the market," he said. "Retarding technological innovation is not usually a good way to protect public health and safety."

Adler also said the President's Cancer Panel report released last week, which was harshly criticized by the American Cancer Society as overstating the link between environmental exposure and cancer, was "an advocacy piece, not a scientific report."

He said it glossed over or omitted relevant scientific studies in order to make "broad, poorly supported conclusions."

"It's essentially saying, 'We're exposed to stuff and we don't know what the effects are,' " he said. There's really not a lot in there pointing to evidence that shows that a significant portion of cancer cases are related to environmental factors."

But Buchanan said there's enough evidence on enough chemicals to act now: "There are probably a few hundred chemicals that we know of that cause cancer, so let's start with those we have a track record on."

Susan Tullai-McGuinness, a registered nurse and an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University who is working with Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, agreed.

"It does take a long time to build the science -- but if you have significant current understanding that a chemical is dangerous, then it's time to act," Tullai-McGuinness said.

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